October Newsletter

Posted by C3W Admin on October 30 2024

We have gathered together the latest news and events, together with some content not available on the website and put it into a Newsletter, see below.

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NEWSLETTER OCTOBER 2024

The “Connecting Three Worlds” team congratulates our colleague and postdoctoral fellow Andrea Espinoza Carvajal, who left our project in September to join the Department of Sociology at the London School of Economics. Andrea will hold a position as an LSA Fellow in Human Rights, Politics and Gender, and will continue her research on feminism in Latin America, and how women cope with laws and institutions:

https://www.lse.ac.uk/sociology/people/academic-staff/andrea-espinoza-carvajal

Andrea’s work relies on ethnographic, archival, and art-based methods. You can read a sample of her original research in our blog:

Unruly feminists and women in bikinis

Congratulations, Andrea! We wish you a very successful journey and are grateful and honoured to have had you on the C3W team!

News

They arrived in Cuba with a suitcase and
returned to SA as doctors

Our 4-day oral history symposium ‘The Public Good, Planning and Internationalism in Africa Health, held’ in South Africa last year, has continued to generate press and public engagement on the project’s themes – in this case on the past and present health training relationship between South Africa and Cuba. We invited Africa-based journalists to join us at the event, and the Bhekisisa Centre for Health Journalism in Africa has syndicated articles and broadcast interviews based on new contacts and source information created there. Recent articles on the Cuba-South Africa relationship have sparked public discussion – including ‘They arrived in Cuba with a suitcase and returned to SA as doctors’, published in the Mail & Guardian newspaper during the summer. The 2023 event was co-organised by C3W members David Bannister, Sarah Howard and Sarah Marks, in collaboration with research groups at the University of Oslo and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. We are publishing the collected transcripts as an open access resource for use by other researchers, with publication expected later this year or early 2025.

https://mg.co.za/health/2024-08-13-they-arrived-in-cuba-with-a-suitcase-and-returned-to-sa-as-doctors/

Dates for your Diary

HSS Annual Meeting

Gisela Mateos and Edna Suárez-Díaz have been busy with the preparation for the History of Science Society Centennial in Mérida, Yucatán. They are in charge of local arrangements for this important academic event when the oldest history of science academic society will turn 100 hundred years old. Also, it is the first time that HSS has taken place in a Latin American country.

Our C3W project members will participate in several roundtables, talks, and other activities. The preliminary program has been announced, and this will be a thrilling event:

https://hssonline.org/page/HSS24

Between November 10 and 13, project members will meet in Progreso, Mexico for a writing workshop, where they will be discussing research, upcoming publications, works in progress, and collaborative outputs.

Publications

Maziyar Ghiabi has published the following with co-author Masoumeh Maarefvand based in Iran. The cultural turn in understanding “addiction”,’ International Journal of Drug Policy (2024)

The article is open access.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0955395924001580

Research news

Photo source: CREFAL LIbrary and Archive, Pátzcuaro MIchoacán.

At the end of July, Gisela Mateos and Edna Suárez-Díaz visited the archives at CREFAL (currently, the Regional Centre for Cooperation on Adult Education for Latin America and the Caribbean) in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán. CREFAL was funded in 1950 by UNESCO and the government of Mexico as a regional centre for “fundamental education.” It promoted the training of rural teachers from the region to promote community building in several areas: economy, agriculture, alphabetization, and health. During the first decade after its creation, CREFAL trained hundreds of teachers in the overarching idea that “fundamental education” was requisite to bring “development” to rural populations, mostly Indigenous.

Today, CREFAL still offers training for demographers, sociologists, and other regional specialists. It holds a beautiful collection of documents, photographs, and publications at its library and archive. The audio-visual archive keeps the original filmstrips (“diavistas”) which served as pedagogical tools in the 1950s and which will be the topic of Gisela and Edna’s contribution for the special issue on ‘Global Histories of Community Health’ edited by Andrea Espinoza and Sebastián Fonseca, from the C3W team.

Photo source: CREFAL LIbrary and Archive, Pátzcuaro MIchoacán.

Community Healthcare in Tanzania:
Historical Insights and Contemporary Challenges

Sponsored by the ECR supporting fund of the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, the workshop “Community Healthcare in Tanzania: Historical Insights and Contemporary Challenges” was held in Dar es Salaam Tanzania on 24 August 2024. This workshop was co-organised by C3W postdoctoral research fellow Lu Chen and Andrea Kifyasi at University of Dar es Salaam. It convened a diverse group of professionals, including healthcare practitioners, historians, and community health workers, to explore a wide range of topics from historical interventions to modern-day challenges in Tanzanian healthcare.

The workshop began with opening remarks from Lu Chen and Andrea Kifyasi. The morning session featured enlightening presentations from Dr. Musa Sadock, Nelson Makole, Farida Silla, who highlighted significant historical healthcare campaigns such as Mtu Ni Afya and the smallpox eradication efforts. A vibrant discussion followed, where speakers and attendees shared their views on the impact of colonial health policies, the legacy of Ujamaa on healthcare, and the evolution of traditional medicine within community settings.

The afternoon was dedicated to contemporary issues, with contributions from Dr Shukrani Sanga, Salehe Kadope, Stephano, Simon Simba, John Ndaro, and Ephraim Lufyagile among others, who shared real-world insights into the daily operations and challenges within Tanzania’s healthcare services. Discussions covered the effects of government policies, the necessity for ongoing training for health workers, and the integration of traditional medicine within modern healthcare frameworks.

One of the highlights of the workshop was an open discussion on ethical collaborations in healthcare, which critically assessed the impact of international aid and the importance of involving local communities in health initiatives. The workshop concluded with a consensus on the need for continued dialogue and action to address the challenges faced by community healthcare systems in Tanzania.

Media

Dora Vargha was interviewed for the BBC documentary series ‘A House Through Time: Two Cities at War’, Episode 3 on a polio case in Berlin during WWII. The interview was recorded at the Department for Anatomy at Charite in Berlin in 2023.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002389r/a-house-through-time-series-5-two-cities-at-war-episode-3